NPR Music

Yung's music is a space of duality: innocence and experience, beauty and pain, darkness and light. Frontman Mikkel Holm Silkjær embodies opposites, too: His music showcases both his maturity as a songwriter and his youth, as he relies on more than a decade of songwriting experience despite being only 21. Both of Silkjær's parents are musical; they put him behind a drum set at the age of 4 and introduced him to the local punk scene as a teen.

For the last five years, since the release of his album KMAG YOYO, Hayes Carll has been on a mini-hiatus. During that period, he decided it was time for a change creatively and wrestled with how that change would look and sound. It was a time of personal transitions, including the end of Carll's marriage and his departure from his record label.

For the last five years, since the release of his album KMAG YOYO, Hayes Carll has been on a mini-hiatus. During that period, he decided it was time for a change creatively and wrestled with how that change would look and sound. It was a time of personal transitions, including the end of Carll's marriage and his departure from his record label.

Thao & The Get Down Stay Down joins World Cafe for a set recorded live from lead singer Thao Nguyen's home in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band recently released its fourth album, A Man Alive, which was produced by Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs. Nguyen says the title alludes to her ongoing estrangement from her father.

It's been more than a decade since Erin Tobey's last solo album, and if the name sounds somewhat familiar, she was part of the early- to mid-'00s Bloomington punk scene in bands like Abe Froman and Mt. Gigantic.

Wilco makes its third appearance on Mountain Stage, recorded live at the Culture Center Theater in Charleston, W.Va. Since its formation as an alt-country-influenced descendant of Uncle Tupelo in the mid-'90s, the Chicago band has evolved into the de facto standard-bearer for experimental rock.

Iggy Pop recently teamed up with Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme to reignite some of Pop's Berlin-era swagger for his new album, Post Pop Depression. For this special KCRW live session, the iconic punk rocker was in fine form, backed by an all-star band. Watch them perform "Sunday" here.